John Wayne Jackson of Lubbock isn’t really sorrowful today that he didn’t get a 30-year career in the U.S. Navy, but that’s surely what he would have chosen if conditions at the end of World War II had been different.

He remembers badgering his father in 1941 to sign for him because he couldn’t get in at 17 without a signature.

He had even tried to join the Army a year earlier at Amarillo, but a cab driver’s forged signature only got him inside the induction center.

“It didn’t take them long until they found out I was 16 years old,” he remembers.

Though born in Lubbock County, he was living in Matador while attempting to enter the service.

“Me and another kid I ran around with decided to come up here to Lubbock and enlist, but I couldn’t get my Dad to sign the papers. I followed him up and down those streets until finally I just wore him out, and he said, ‘I’m going to sign those papers — that’s all I’ve heard from you nearly since you’ve been born.’ And I said, ‘Well, it looks like we’re going to be in a war pretty soon, and I would kind of like to be there when it starts.’

“I never thought about Japan — I was thinking about Europe.”

He remembers, “I came on up here from Matador, and signed up. Two or three days later I was in Dallas. Another kid — he’s not a kid anymore — was Charles McCoy from Lubbock. We went to Dallas, and from Dallas to San Diego to boot camp.”

After training, Jackson and McCoy were put aboard the troop transport USS Lurline.

“We got into Pearl Harbor eight days after the bombing.”

He was assigned to the submarine tender USS Pelias, and McCoy volunteered for duty aboard the submarine USS Trout.

Jackson was excited to be at war, and not a bit worried about being killed:

“At 17, you’re not too concerned about things like that.”

He discovered that submarine tenders like the ship on which he served, were prime targets for enemy submarines because their destruction would have largely neutralized the operations of U.S. underwater warships.

“We docked in Melbourne, Australia. The Japanese had taken all of Singapore, and they would come over about every night and drop a few bombs. You never knew which one might be going to hit you. All during the war, we operated kind of up and down the west coast there.”

He also could see the unmistakable wake of torpedoes heading in a straight line toward the Pelias. “We outmaneuvered the things.”

He remembers, “We had a good skipper on that ship. He was an old white hat that came up through the ranks and was captain. Even the war ships, the Saratoga and the carriers, they might be gone on liberty, but we were standing watch — I mean we stood watch in San Francisco.”

The ship also ran a zigzag course to offer an unpredictable target for Japanese submariners.

“New Zealand is kind of divided, Wellington is on one side and on the other side is an area they called Torpedo Alley. The Japanese hung out there. Right on down there is Tasmania, an island off there — the same thing, you have to go through that narrow passage, and that’s where the Japanese submarines shot at us.”

Jackson, who was in charge of a whaleboat, at times would take out a crew and two depth charges on an 80-foot cable, just hoping to spot an enemy submarine.

“My greatest hope was to get up close enough to drop a depth charge. Could you imagine what would have happened if a depth charge had gone off? I never thought about that, I just wanted to get one of those submarines.”

Still, he remembers, he didn’t feel fear.

“I was never afraid. I was raised up on a ranch where it’s a pretty rough life, and the people you associated with ... there wasn’t any such thing as fear. Naturally, when a plane came over and dropped bombs, you were a little nervous, but I never had any real fear. I always figured the other guy might get killed, but not me.”

And if the ship should sink?

“They had an old saying in the Navy: If you get sunk, hold your nose until you hit the bottom, then run!”

When the war ended, he was sent to an amphibious craft base at Coronado, Calif. But he actually wanted the open waters of the ocean.

“I was in direct charge of the boat division, right out of San Diego. I had no intention of getting out of the Navy. I didn’t have to swab decks anymore.

“But I got tired of staying in the states all the time — one liberty and you were broke.”

Jackson was told he could sign up to extend his tour if he signed up within 30 days. “I was heading to the East Coast, and got off the train in Odessa. I was having such a good time there — Las Vegas wouldn’t look like anything compared to what was going on in Odessa.”

He missed the sign-up date by one day, and was offered a chance to stay and be demoted to apprentice seaman. He decided against swabbing decks again. “It wasn’t because I wanted out. It was just the circumstances.”

Jackson, who was never afraid during World War II when the nation was united, acknowledges that he feels fear now.

“I’m nearly 90 years old, and have been real active in politics all my life. All these years I’ve never seen anything like what’s going on now. We can’t survive if we keep going like this — we can’t do it, we won’t survive,” he warns.

“Everybody is so intimidated. Just a few people have got enough money to be independent, but the majority of people ... I know they don’t like what’s going on, but they don’t dare open their mouth.